Are the Magnetic Fields worthy of a cinema-released documentary film, Strange Powers? Listen closely and the answer can only be a resounding yes
For the last decade and a half I've been hoisting the tag "modern genius" upon the shrugging shoulders of Magnetic Fields man Stephin Merritt. Yet even I wondered if they were really worthy of a cinema-released documentary. Thankfully, my concerns were dismissed within the first few seconds of Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields.
Over the opening credits played Epitaph for My Heart, a track from the band's 69 Love Songs album, which I carried on my person for about three years after its 2000 release, devouring it like a bottomless tub of Chunky Monkey and proclaiming it the best album since Revolver. Despite playing it so often, a line leapt out from this dolorous slab of heartbreak that I'd never noticed before: "Cupid put too much poison in the dart." It's a muffled gem of a line, and an example of why the Magnetic Fields are considered important enough to document on film, why they're widely considered a band you're either obsessed with or have never heard of, and why their concerts are often full of people laughing at all the lyrical gags as though they've never heard them before. Because, often, they haven't; Merritt's words unravel fresh nuances of misery and hilarity with each performance, and reward repeated study.
Inevitably, given Merritt's private nature, Strange Powers ? filmed over a decade by fly-on-the-wall directors Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara ? is as notable for what it leaves out as what it includes. It's fascinating to follow the Magnetic Fields' stylistic retreat from the guitarless beginnings of Distant Plastic Trees through The Charm of the Highway Strip and Get Lost (records that sound like brilliant folk, pop, disco and country songs fed through a rivet-welding machine) to the largely effect-free acoustic material of 69 Love Songs and beyond, but there's no hint of Merritt's numerous side-projects ? particularly the 6ths, wherein he gets indie notaries to sing his songs to make what are essentially tribute albums to himself.
The footage of Merritt writing in techno-thumping gay bars and of Magnetic Fields recording sessions is priceless ? it turns out these grand, otherworldly songs are all recorded in Merritt's New York apartment, with a cellist peforming in a shower cubicle and manager-cum-cohort Claudia Gonson playing weird toy instruments or whatever she can find in Merritt's kitchen drawers. But there's no mention of Merritt's hyperacusis, a hearing condition that inflicts painful feedback whenever Merritt encounters loud noises such as applause or "women in gay bars". Let alone the revolutionary politics he keeps under wraps because, as he explained to me a decade ago, if he were to mention what he'd like to see happen to our Queen he'd never be allowed in the UK again.
The reason the Magnetic Fields make for great documentary material is that they are a band with many layers. It's there in the tragi-comic twists of Papa Was a Rodeo (a maudlin tale of lost childhood that concludes: "What a coincidence, your papa was a rodeo too."), domestic violence romp Yeah! Oh Yeah! and I Looked All Over Town, which documents the outcast anguish encountered when, by accident of birth, you happen to be a circus clown. And it's there in the paradoxes of Merritt's impenetrable personality: these bright melodies delivered in his beleaguered baritone; his choosing to perform a ukelele dirge called Smile, No-One Cares How You Feel on US breakfast television.
Strange Powers enlightens but doesn't saturate the Merritt myth. Like its subject, it leaves plenty for the intrepid new Magnetic Fields fan to uncover. And, if there's any justice, it will convert ignorants to obsessives.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/feb/16/strange-powers-stephin-merritt-magnetic-fields
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